Safety in numbers: women still need support to succeed in technology

Sylvia Pennington

'Women in IT' support groups are still relevant even though more have climbed to the top.

While some women have clawed their way to the top in the male-dominated information technology sector, others continue to turn to networking and support groups for help, prompting one organisation to call for a national initiative to recruit and retain women.

From HP and IBM global chiefs Meg Whitman and Virginia Rometty to Microsoft Australia's managing director Pip Marlow and Intel's newly installed Australia and New Zealand general manager Kate Burleigh, high achieving women have demonstrated that they can run the high-tech world.

So why do 'women in IT' events and support groups, designed to help women feel at ease in a male-dominated industry, continue to spring up and flourish? Is it because, lower down the ranks in IT departments, there's still a problem?

Yes, there is, says Mary McLeod, chair of the Females in Information Technology and Telecommunications Group (FITT), a special interest chapter of the Australian Information Industries Association (AIIA).

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Not just one problem but several: "Depending upon which segment or group you look at – girls in high schools, under-graduate participation rates in tertiary courses, entry-level women in [information and communication technology] ICT, mid-career women who turn to ICT from other careers, women in ICT trying to stay in ICT – all have different problems and needs and one solution will not fit all. Hence, why there are numerous groups and programs trying to meet all these different needs."

McLeod says a national initiative to recruit and retain women in ICT is needed to underpin the work of the willing but hard-pressed batch of ad hoc support groups which have had to step into the breach thus far.

"The responsibility, apart from the educational and academic sector, who do a great job in attraction, resides with unpaid volunteers like FITT and other state-based organisations to deliver fragmented programs," she says.

"It's disparate, some of it is not sustainable nor replicable across the country so some regions get advantages over others. And often programs and groups are defined by state boundaries, which is a shame, given ICT ignores state boundaries."

Gender and sexism and work/life/family balance are the main issues that make it difficult for women to stay in the industry and lead them to seek the support of their peers in networking and mentoring groups, according to FITT research.

By anyone's reckoning, ICT is still a man's world. Women make up 52 per cent of the population but only 18 per cent of the ICT workforce, according to Australian Bureau of Statistics figures.

At the profession's entry level, the numbers are similarly low. Women accounted for 20 per cent of enrolments in the University of NSW's computer science and engineering undergraduate course this year; a figure which has barely changed since 1997, when it sat at 18 per cent.

Feeling like a minority group leads many women to turn to their female peers for moral support. For the first time this year, FITT is unable to meet the demand for its mentoring program which links early career professionals with senior counterparts.

Grassroots groups like Girl Geek Coffees say some members report feeling isolated and marginalised. This is particularly the case in highly technical areas such as coding, where women are outnumbered 19 to one.

While female programmers may not be faced with intimidating displays of masculinity in the classroom or the backroom - although some say they do -, the introverted geek culture is "passively unwelcoming" to women, Girl Geek Coffees founder Miriam Hochwald said.

"Women can be treated as average or below par and it's assumed they won't do as well. It can be lonely and isolating for women studying IT. Girls that survive get entrenched in the male geek culture that surrounds them."

McLeod says government investment in an organisation that "could pull all the programs around Australia together and actually deliver on the ground would go a long way to increasing the 20 per cent representation of women in IT."

52 comments so far

Geeks aren't unwelcoming because of some stereotypical discomfort around women. It's because the women who pick IT as a career are almost universally unattractive. Geeks like hot chicks too you know.

Commenter

Nicho

Location

Sydney

Date and time

May 02, 2012, 9:13AM

WTF? If IT departments started choosing new employees based on physical attractiveness they'd be ghost towns in no time. I'd take odds-on, site unseen, you'd be one of the first to go.

All these affirmative action style initiatives are a waste of time. Speaking from my own limited experience, women fall into two camps in regards to careers: happy to sacrifice time to demands of a family life or extremely ambitious. IT is a middle of the ground career path, not really worth it to either case.

Commenter

jfox

Date and time

May 02, 2012, 6:34PM

Nicho thinks he is joking but unfortunately this kind of attitude is pretty much entrenched in the culture of the IT industry. See also Mark Harrison's response below - could it be more hostile and counterproductive?

Both of them illustrate why women don't even bother. Both men demonstrate the utterly inept lack of EQ that drives women out. And both think it is perfectly ok!

As IT managers it is up to us to maximise the value available in the talent pool by stamping out systemic bias and ensuring our environments are approachable for women.

Commenter

Josh

Location

Melbourne

Date and time

May 03, 2012, 5:35AM

Comments like that are wholly unhelpful and simply confirm to most of us that you have missed the point of this important issue.

If you were just joking, it wasn't a funny joke.

Commenter

Stephen

Location

Melbourne

Date and time

May 03, 2012, 10:06AM

Seems to me that true equality means an equality of opportunity, not an equality of outcome. That way merit determines the outcome, not some blinkered interpretation of which sectors of society currently need "help" to succeed.

So, do women have equality of opportunity to succeed? I suspect they do. So just show your merit girls, and stop your bloody whinging.

If you focus on the outcome, you guarantee a diminution of standards. Would you want your heart surgeon to have his job because he's a good surgeon, or because he's gay, black, female, quadriplegic, or whatever?

Commenter

Socratic Dog

Date and time

May 02, 2012, 9:43AM

Why would we want to encourage women into roles that are being increasing outsourced to developing nations? To do so is setting them up for failure.

Commenter

Direct

Date and time

May 02, 2012, 10:17AM

Really? 2/3 of the IT project management team at one of the clients I work at is female, as it half the account management team at my IT employer, half the hardware purchasing team and nearly all of the accounting team. Also the General Manager.

Women shouldn't need 'support' or special privileges, they need equality. Gender should be irrelevant, only skills. That's what the focus should be on.

Commenter

DM

Date and time

May 02, 2012, 10:20AM

Has it occured to anybody that simply there are less females interested in working in technology? I personally do not know of any females who have any interest in coding.

I am a programmer myself and I personally would love to have more female coders around here. So long as they didn't get the job through some kind of affirmative action program.

Commenter

Robert

Location

Melbourne

Date and time

May 02, 2012, 10:43AM

Exactly Robbo. Check out how many male applicants you get for each male. It's based on a CHOICE. Should we set up an inquiry into the under-representation of male nurses ? Or male midwives ? Hate to be too honest but females are generally better at nurturing, males better at writing programs.It's plain silly to try and suggest there's some sort of discrimination undermining preventing females making progess. In IT its based on technical skills and people skills. You've got both and you'll go a long way. Male or female.

Commenter

Davo

Date and time

May 02, 2012, 2:08PM

I'm a female developer who loves technology since I was in high school in the 90s.

Its just unfortunate that females are second class citizens and when they do speak up at meetings with very technical comments that are asked by less technical males, they are automatically shot down and ignored.

In the 6 years I've been in IT I have never known a male that has accepted my technical comments, but I know too many males that take my technical comments and present them as their own.

Perhaps its the threat that females in technology know their stuff and can out smart some males?

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